Here's the thing: On the playing field, 2008 sizes up about the same as last year:

*The Pats? Should go 19-0 en route to another Super Bowl title.

*The Red Sox? Will be the favorites to win another World Series (Go Tigers!)

*The Spurs? Will be the favorites to win another NBA title, over KG and the rejuvinated Celtics (at least offering temporary relief from Boston sports dominance)

*Florida football? Should enter and exit the 2008 season at No. 1, led by the reigning Heisman winner.

Yeesh.The common factor: Dominance. Dominance is not good for sports, no matter what the Patriots' TV ratings might be. Fans need to believe there's a chance another team (their team, or otherwise) can win. Otherwise, what's the point?

The only thing that will redeem 2008 is that it can't possibly match the all-time OFF-field lows of 2007: Vick, Donaghy, Mitchell. Can it?

What were your favorite sports memories of 2007? And what are your predictions for 2008?

15 comments:

This is a good article Dan. I have to say that most of it is likely to come true except for the part about UF being the wire to wire No. 1.

OSU could return their entire team, a BCS championship bowl team. KU return 20 out of 22 starters on a BCS bowl team. USC is always loaded. UF won't return that many players and there is no way that Tebow has this type of season again. Oh year. UF isn't in a BCS bowl this year.

I agree with much of what you wrote about this being a horrible sports year, but this was perhaps the BEST year for college football. Never before, in recent memory, could you not predict what would happen each week.

Yeah, it should be noted Gator fans under the age of 30 are insufferable. I was in Atlanta for the Final Four and most older Gator fans had suffered through too many shitty seasons which humbled them enough to appreciate how spectacular their teams are. Most older fans were very humble and respectful. I wish I could say the same for the author of this blog.

I disagree that 2008 will be more of the same:

-Pats WON'T win the Super Bowl. It too much bad karma for them the whole season. I think the intangibles will bite them in the ass come playoff time.

-Red Sox won't win another World Series soon. They won't be the dominant force like the Yankees were in the 90s. There's just too much competition in baseball (Tigers, anyone?)

-Spurs could rattle off another championship, but I think there's more competition this year than last. Besides, it's the NBA, who cares?

-There is no way Florida is going to be #1 beginning of the season next year. USC, LSU, OSU and Oklahoma will seem like better teams for voters next year than Florida for the preseason polls. I'm guessing we'll have another crazy season like this year, though.

It may have been a bad year for American sports fans, but people up in Canada could say it wasn't a bad year at all. Ottawa Senators made it back to the Stanley Cup Final (first since 1915 - & third Canadian team in a row to reach the finals), Canada won its third Gold in a row at the World Juniors (going for fourth in the tournament right now), people caught Sid the Kid fever, a small city in the middle of nowhere hosted an excellent Canada Winter Games (Whitehorse, Yukon), Toronto Blue Jays had a promising season looking towards 2008, Toronto Raptors are playing solid basketball once again, Vancouver is gaining momentum towards the 2010 Olympics, Toronto may be hosting NFL games in a year or two, and probably one of the prouder moments for a lot of Canadians is watching the Saskatchewan Roughriders host a home playoff game in the CFl for the first time since 1989 and then go on to win the Grey Cup against their rivals the Winnipeg Bluebombers (think Green Bay vs Chicago in a Superbowl - David vs Goliath as far as population goes).

I agree with you that it was a shitty sports year. As a Colorado sports fan waking up to terrible news on new years day and all my teams sucking, except the Rockies. But I will never forget the Rockies run, haven't had that much fun since the Avalanche stanley cup run in 2001, the Rockies were definetly the highlite of my '07.

- Blazers lost. Great run, but if you look at the schedule, most of that run was at home, and most of it was against teams that don't scare anybody. I think they are in for a season miles ahead of expectations after Oden went down, but that 8 seed is still going to be quite a stretch, I think.

- Oregon hung 56 on South Florida in the Sun Bowl. wtf? How sure are we that Dennis Dixon really didn't play? I don't think anybody saw that score coming.

Gee, I guess that January 8 and April 2 of 2007 were very good days for the Gator Nation. Yes, I'm one of those insufferable Gator fans (and proud of it!). On the other hand, I live in South Florida, and the less said about 2007 for the Dolphins, Marlins, Heat, Panthers, the better!

Calling Florida the first school to hold both the football and basketball championships is somewhat speculative. In 1951 Kentucky won the national championship in basketball, and beat the No. 1 team in the country in football. The computer polls placed UK no. 1, but there wasn't a poll after the bowl games that year.

Wait and see what USC does today in the Rose Bowl. As for Florida, I think they should beat Michigan before they start talking about next year. It's not the Florida football fans that are insufferable, it's the basketball fans.

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DanShanoff.com is a sports-blog spin-off of my long-time ESPN.com column, "The Daily Quickie." Anchored by an early-morning post of must-know topics, the blog is updated frequently throughout the day with new posts and user comments.